


after all these years apart

by charleybradburies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friendship, Gen, Gendry is a Baratheon, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, I'm Sorry, Internal Monologue, Married Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Multi, One Shot, Pregnancy, Reunions, Season/Series 08, Short, Short One Shot, Storm's End (ASoIaF), Surprises, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 05:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18985810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: Hot Pie hears of this Lord Gendry and goes to serve, he hopes, his friend.





	after all these years apart

He'd encouraged Arry - Arya, he really should think of her as Arya now: Arya Stark, highborn Lady of a Great House - to go North, and then watched her ride off alone, and he shouldn't have. It's a series of regrets that Hot Pie has, quite consistently, really. They've come back to him in waves ever since he watched Arry and Gendry leave the inn all those years ago. 

He's enjoyed his time at the inn, and he had been safe for most of it, more than could be said for most people - most of Westeros, really - but part of him always yearned to still have his friends, if only to know that they were all right. Seeing Arya after so long had been the only real notice he'd gotten of them, and even so, she'd not told him a great deal about where or how she'd been, and she'd not seen Gendry for years. As far as he knows, no one has, and as much trust he has that his friends are strong, resilient people...life wasn't kind.

He'd have liked to get news of Arya herself, even just news that she'd returned home, before hearing that she'd defeated whoever the fuck the Night King was. He had barely a summary of the war in the North, but if he had more he could tell people the due credit she really deserved, which he was certain was more than they knew.

It's when he actually gets news of Gendry - or, at least, thinks he does - that Hot Pie finally decides to leave the inn. A bastard of King's Landing, son of former king Robert, gone to fight the Northern war and made lord by the Dragon Queen. Lord of Storm's End, one of the castles that met the kingsroad, just like Arry's castle. 

He doesn't get to see much of the soldiers himself, but a fortnight after the news of the destruction in King's Landing reaches them, some Tully men talk at the inn of their upcoming journeys south, with Lady Stark and Lord Baratheon and a lady knight, and he hopes he thinks of all the right people as he eavesdrops. 

(At the end of the conversation, when they're retiring for the night, he's made aware he's surely thinking of the wrong Lady Stark, for long hair and pretty dresses sound far more like Arry's sister than like her, but he would be happy to meet Lady Sansa all the same.)

He gives himself some time, though, to save money, to practice his breads - he's gotten good at the wolf, but stags are more complicated - and to wait out whatever shit will be happening in King's Landing. All in all, it's a bit more than two months after Hot Pie's first heard news about Lord Gendry before he actually starts to travel south. Then, even though he does his best to walk hard and constant, it's perhaps a month before he comes up on King's Landing, a city very clearly in the midst of rebuilding. Somehow, even though he had grown up in the city, he's made more emotional at the sight of Arya's banners surrounding it than of the city itself. Targaryen banners fly with the Stark ones, too, but he doesn't know any Targaryens. Maybe it means someone's married, maybe it means Arry’s brother-turned-cousin has been the one to take the city, but he won’t stop to question the circumstances, as he only really cares about one highborn lady - though he cares for her family, too, by association - and perhaps one lord. 

A lord that sure as any of the seven hells had better be his Gendry and not some other, he thinks at one point, when he's sure he's in the Stormlands, because it's been raining hard for days, interspersed only with snow. Even if the lord wasn't the right Gendry he'd be grateful to be under a proper roof for the weather, but Hot Pie really hopes to be able to see him and to stay at Storm's End. It had been so long since they'd been together, after all. 

It’s snowing again, and thundering, too, when he finally sees what must be Storm’s End, that massive round stone figure, the middle of it stretching up into the sky, part covered by fog and snow.

He realizes as he approaches the gate that he’s not spoken to any noble, save for Arry and the lady knight, in years. Was he supposed to bow here, or would that only be for kings? If it were the Gendry who Hot Pie hopes for, he probably doesn’t care if people bowed or kneeled or anything, but what if he wasn’t? Worse, what if it was the Gendry he hoped for, but he was different enough that he did care? Hot Pie’s come hoping he’ll still have a friend, but maybe he didn’t think it through well enough.

Arya hadn’t been _so_ different, though - grown up, certainly, more a woman than he’d have expected, but still seemingly herself. 

The first real confirmation that some of his instincts had been right is that he’s immediately welcomed in by guards, who ask him many questions but not before saying that their lord explicitly wanted the smallfolk to be sheltered when the storms were rough. Knowing the castle stands by a notoriously harsh bay, Hot Pie wonders if that’s often. It was the Stormlands, after all, not the Sunshine Lands. 

He says he thinks he knows Lord Gendry, and one of the guards examines him for a moment.

“Lord and Lady Baratheon have been in the Round Hall all day. You can have an audience with him there, if you’d like.”

It catches him off guard - a Lady Baratheon, _already?_ \- but he nods in agreement and the guard gestures for Hot Pie to follow as he walks off. He follows the man all the way to a big round room with many tables, one long one close to the opposite wall and facing the entryway. The man he thinks must be the lord is leaning against the edge of the fireplace behind the table, the woman who must be his wife seated at the right of an empty chair, likely his, and they’re speaking softly about something. The maester is on the other side of the chair, and he gestures for the guard to speak.

“A visitor has asked an audience, my lord...my lady. A...Hot Pie,” he says, the name awkward off his tongue, but Hot Pie doesn’t care because it’s _them_. If he’d been standing closer, he might have gotten whiplash at how quickly the lord and lady turn themselves to face him, but he certainly has it from the realization that not only is this lord indeed _his_ Gendry, it’s _Arya_ at the table. Gendry rushes forward, making his way around the table to give Hot Pie a momentary hug. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and both he and Arya, who has stood up from her place at the table, laugh.

“What am _I_ doing here? You’ve become a lord, and you’re wondering what _I’m_ doing?” 

Gendry chuckles.

“I ‘spose that’s fair. Didn’t expect it either.”

Hot Pie laughs with him this time, taking a moment, though, to take in just how lordly he looks, and another to realize that Arya...doesn’t entirely look herself.

It’s only after she’s made her way around the table to come greet him herself that he notes that it’s because she’s larger than she had been; his instinct is to keep a hand against her stomach as she pulls away from their own short hug, and then to worry he’s offended her, but she just laughs.

“A few months on,” she says, fondly, reading his mind. “Maester Jurne thinks they’ll be a girl.”

Hot Pie looks excitedly to Gendry, and Arry turns back to face said maester.

“Have a room prepared for our friend, please.”


End file.
